Reducing Belly Fats with Antidepressant Drugs--A Mice Study

Having a dad bod is some kind of a trend nowadays, but that beer belly ain’t healthy you know.

Belly fat isn’t just adding your weight and lowering your self-esteem, it's slowly killing you too. It is associated with different diseases like heart diseases and type 2 diabetes. And it's undeniable how difficult (ugh, understatement) it is to lose weight in the specific area. But now, a study pinpoint immune cell inflammation as the culprit which makes it quite easier to find a possible solution.

These immune cells, specifically macrophages, are the ones that track down and eat up the pathogens in our bodies. But as we grow old, macrophages become inflamed in the belly fat. Christina Camell of the Yale School of Medicine and colleagues isolated these cells from fat tissue of old and young mice, and sequenced the DNA from these macrophages.

Results showed that genomes of the macrophages from the old mice expressed more genes that stops catecholamines--an organic compound that spread signals between neurons. “We found [that] macrophages in belly fat interfere with signals in a way that’s new to us,” says Camell. These genes work by activating an enzyme that blocks certain neurotransmitters (which signal the body that there is fat available for burning energy).